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19 Years and 5 Minutes Later	By : TheMightyFlynn Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 58416 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 6
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, or any characters related to that series; they are JK Rowling's. I make no money from this.

Chapter List
- 1-19 Years and 5 Minutes Later
- 2-Ch. 2
- 3-Ch. 3
- 4-Ch. 4
- 5-Ch. 5
- 6-Ch. 6
- 7-Ch. 7
- 8-Ch. 8
- 9-Ch. 9
- 10-Ch. 10
- 11-Ch. 11
- 12-Ch. 12
- 13-Ch. 13
- 14-Ch. 14
- 15-Ch. 15
- 16-Ch. 16
- 17-Ch. 17
- 18-Ch. 18
- 19-Ch. 19
- 20-Ch. 20
- 21-Ch. 21
- 22-Ch. 22
- 23-Ch. 23
- 24-Ch. 24
- 25-Ch. 25
- 26-Ch. 26
- 27-Ch. 27
- 28-Ch. 28
- 29-Ch. 29
- 30-Ch. 30
- 31-Ch. 31
- 32-Ch. 32
- 33-Ch. 33
- 34-Ch. 34
- 35-Ch. 35
- 36-Ch. 36
- 37-Ch. 37
- 38-Ch. 38
- 39-Ch. 39
- 40-Ch. 40
- 41-Ch. 41
- 42-Ch. 42
- 43-Ch. 43
- 44-Ch. 44
- 45-Ch. 45
- 46-Ch. 46
- 47-Ch. 47
- 48-Ch. 48
- 49-Ch. 49
- 50-Ch. 50
- 51-Epilogue
- 36
- 37
- 38
A/N: Thanks for the reviews!
No matter how many times he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, Draco found that he couldn’t calm his nerves. He had left Harry and Lily at Grimmauld that afternoon – where he had been staying since last Thursday – so he could keep an appointment with his lawyers. He had tried to get one earlier, but they had put him off until Monday afternoon, stating that they wanted to wait until they knew more and therefore could give him the most useful amount of information at once. Not that Draco was ungrateful for any information they could give him, but that wasn’t the only reason he was anxious about this meeting. He hadn’t told anyone but Astoria, but today was the day he intended to sign the divorce papers.
It was a strange sensation, knowing that everything that he had worked so hard for was about to be undone by his own hand, but it was something that he knew had to happen. Astoria had been his safety net for so long, but it was time. He had Harry and a whole new life to look forward to, so it was only fair that he allow her the same chance. A new start of her own is what he owed her for helping him for so long and that was exactly what he was going to offer her.
He sighed as his stomach flipped again. He hadn’t had any serious use for his lawyers since the trials, with the exception of using them to discover exactly how far he could go in certain aspects of his work without attracting the attention of the Aurors. Not that he had ever strayed that far from the law, but it was good to know the limits of one’s activities. Especially if one just happened to have been a Death Eater.
“Oi, watch it!”
Draco scowled as he accidentally brushed against the shoulder of a man in Diagon. He knew he had become complacent since the end of the War: not watching every shadow for potential threats and not eyeing the people around him with the same level of suspicion as he used to. It was a state of being that he quite enjoyed; one that he was unwilling to give up. Or, at least, he had thought he was unwilling. The idea that he was prepared to change everything he found comfortable for Harry… He shivered. It was a terrifying thought.
“Mr. Malfoy! How are you this afternoon?” The secretary’s voice was as warm and welcoming as always when Draco entered the lobby of the lawyer’s offices.
“Fine, thank you.” Draco took another deep breath and gave himself a mental shake, putting Harry as far to the back of his mind as he could. “Are they ready to see me?”
“Of course. If you would follow me.”
Draco nodded, feeling his public mask slip over him. He had always found it so much easier to deal with people if he didn’t present his true self to them. He had found that he had had little use for this public persona recently, with the amount of time he had been spending with Harry, but it slipped over him like he had never dropped it. Straightening his back and keeping his eyes trained ahead of him, Draco shot a glare at anyone stupid enough to glance his way. He knew that the intimidation that he was able to make a lot of people feel was second-hand, due to his father and the memories people still had of him during the War, but he would take it where he could get it. If it allowed him any kind of freedom that he wouldn’t have otherwise, then he wouldn’t turn it down. The secretary stopped in a vestibule with a set of comfy-looking furniture and a pair of doors, ones that Draco knew led into a smaller, more intimate suite of rooms reserved for the lawyer’s long-term clients.
“If you would just wait here for a few moments, I’ll check to make sure everything is ready.” Her smile widened when Draco nodded again. “Very good.”
Taking a seat on the armchair, Draco took the time to glance around, getting reacquainted with his surroundings. The last time he had sat in this vestibule had been during his trial, but there didn’t seem to be all that much that had changed in the intervening years: the comfortable leather chair and lounge setting appeared to be the same one that matched almost perfectly with the wooden panelling of the walls and the small room still held the same sense of intimidation that Draco remembered. Not that he thought that there was any need for there to have been a change, as a firm this old must have a solid foundation to be able to have lasted above all their competition. His eyes slid back to the doors when they opened to emit the secretary.
“They are ready for you, Mr. Malfoy. I hope everything will be to your satisfaction while you are here.”
Draco nodded as he stood. She was a nice girl, one that he found completely forgettable as soon as she was out of his sight: a very good choice for a secretary. The room he entered was slightly darker than the offices outside, which were brightly lit by some form of magic that Draco had never bothered to wonder about. All three partners were waiting inside for him, each in an armchair with a tumbler of what appeared to be rather expensive whiskey. A fire crackled merrily in the hearth, giving off the scent of pine, which Draco knew to be a rather simple charm, one that his father had used on their fire at Christmas when he had been a child.
“Ah, young Mr. Malfoy!” Garrett Richardson stood from his chair and extended a hand as Draco entered the room. “So good to see you again.”
Draco offered up a small smile. He knew that Richardson had been just starting off in the company when Abraxas Malfoy, Draco's grandfather, had had control of the family fortune. The Malfoy family had been doing business through this firm for many years before Garrett Richardson had been a part of it, following in his own father’s footsteps, and Draco knew that it was due to this that Richardson felt comfortable enough with him to address him in such an informal way. Hell, even Lucius was ‘young Mr. Malfoy’ to Garrett Richardson. It was something that Draco knew he would simply have to put up with if he was to keep cordial relations with the team.
“Likewise, Mr. Richardson. How is the family?”
This set Richardson off on a long and involved explanation of how his eldest daughter had just given him a grandson, how his son-in-law was completely useless – despite the fact that Draco knew that Marianne Richardson had married the star Seeker of the English Quidditch team – but how he had hope for his younger daughter and his son. The son appeared to be the favourite, mostly because he was looking to follow in Garrett’s footsteps and become the ‘Richardson’ in the firm’s name after graduating from Hogwarts in two years’ time. Draco's attention drifted over to where the other two partners were sitting in front of the fire and received a smile and roll of Jeanette Hunter’s eyes. Draco had never really liked her, but he smiled back anyway; there was no need to put her offside without a valid reason. Peter MacGregor smiled at him as well, but Draco had always seen something cold in his expression that caused his smiles to look more like grimaces than anything else.
“But enough about me,” Richardson concluded after a few minutes. “There has been a lot of changes in the Malfoy household over the past few months that need to be addressed, am I right?” He guided Draco over to a spare armchair and pressed a tumbler of whiskey into his hand before Draco could turn it down.
“Yes, there has,” Draco responded after taking a slow sip of his drink. The liquid burned its way down his throat and he smiled. “Although, I believe that you are acquainted with much of it already.”
“True, and we must thank you for sending Mr. Potter our way.” It was Hunter who had responded and Draco turned a mild smile on her. “We believe that we will be able to help him greatly over the course of this case, as well as in the future.”
It was a pitch that he had heard many times before: ‘thank you so much, Mr. Malfoy’, ‘we are so grateful, Mr. Malfoy’, ‘this will be of great help to us, Mr. Malfoy.’ Many people had tried to crawl to him in this way over the years, but it had never yet worked. Jeanette Hunter had only come into the firm ten years before, so she had missed much of what Draco's family had used the firm for. He much preferred to deal with Richardson because of this, but he allowed her to continue, if only because it gave him an idea of how to deal with her. He knew that she was buttering him up, but he leant back against the soft cushions and simply let her speak for a few minutes, enjoying the idea that someone who commanded so much power was trying to sweet talk him, for lack of a better term. Of course, the fact that she obviously thought that he could be bought with a few simple compliments was amusing him no end. He tired of it quickly, though, and interrupted her with a nod and a raise of his hand.
“Well, I needed to know that he was receiving the best service he could get. I assume you are doing everything for him that you would do for me?”
He had allowed a slight edge to enter his voice, just enough so that he could deny it if questioned, but clear enough so he was sure they had all heard it. The tone was more of a warning than anything else; a little way to let her know that he could go elsewhere if he so chose and take Harry with him. It was with a great amount of pleasure that he saw Hunter’s eyes widen, but he didn’t let it show.
“Of course! Mr. Potter is receiving every attention we offer!”
It seemed for a few seconds as though Draco had managed to insult her, if the slight curl of her lip was anything to go by. However, she recovered quickly and offered him an obviously fake smile. The idea that he could be pacified with a smarmy smile from a woman who had just shown him that she was unhappy with what he had said was more insulting than it really should have been. Draco straightened in his chair and raised an eyebrow at her with a look that had caused many men to back off the line of thought they had been pushing over the years. Her smile faltered a little before she continued.
“I do hope that neither he nor you are dissatisfied with our service?”
Draco took another slow sip of his drink before replying, allowing her to stew for a few seconds. He knew he really shouldn’t be using these kinds of tactics with his lawyers, but allowing them – or, rather, her specifically – to know that he was choosing to go through them was giving him a slight rush that he hadn’t felt in too long. The fact that he was also managing to push the idea that he would not be swayed by a simple smile couldn’t hurt things either, he figured.
“Of course not. This firm has taken care of my family for a long time and we have never had any cause to complain about the service we receive.” A strange look crossed MacGregor’s face at Draco's use of the word ‘family’ in reference to Harry, but it was quickly covered up. “However, whether I am satisfied with your service or not isn’t why I have come here tonight.”
“No, of course it isn’t,” Richardson responded in a placating tone. Whether he was trying to calm Draco or Hunter was up for debate, but Draco figured the fact that he was trying to diffuse the situation was a point in his favour. “We do have some useful information for you, Mr. Malfoy.”
“Good.” Draco raised his glass and waited until a house-elf wearing the Ministry-issued uniform his own house-elves wore had refilled it before continuing. “I also have a request to make. But please continue, Mr. Richardson.”
Draco knew that Hunter had noticed that he had chosen Richardson over her to speak to and hoped that it would drive his point home. She couldn’t treat him like one of the common rabble and expect him to not react in a manner suitable to the level of insult she had offered him. Something clicked in the back of his mind and it occurred to him that he was much easier to insult when Harry wasn’t with him. Was it possible that Harry had dulled some of his haughtier reactions that he had developed over the years to discourage people from trying to get too close to him? He shook his head and tuned back in to Richardson’s droning voice.
“Of course, we know that you must be aware of the options that have been presented to Mr. Potter and what he has chosen to pursue in regards to his part of this case. The law does not state that the two of you are not allowed to discuss the case as, despite the fact that you are presenting two different parts of the case, it is essentially one and the same. What we need to know is if you are happy to pursue the same avenue against Mrs. Potter as Mr. Potter is.”
“Weasley.” The correction was out of Draco's mouth before he even had time to think about it.
“Excuse me?”
He knew he was quibbling with tiny details – details that weren’t even official yet – but hearing her addressed as a Potter had sent anger shooting through him. Silently cursing himself for his stupidity, Draco met Richardson’s eyes.
“She no longer wishes to be a Potter. Therefore, she must be a Weasley.” Draco had to resist the urge to breathe a sigh of relief when Richardson nodded his agreement to his amended statement. “You’re correct in assuming that Harry and I have discussed the case and his options. I agree with him that she needs to be placed in a prison that has a mental health facility. There is obviously something that has damaged her psychologically and it will need to be treated if Harry and their children are ever to have anything even resembling a regular life. I will, however, ask that you try to get her locked away for as long as possible. I don’t know how long Harry was told she can be locked up for altogether, but I would like to request the longest term possible.”
“Well, Mr. Potter is going to be charging her with different offences than you are able to. Twenty years is the maximum that she could be facing under what Mr. Potter is going to accuse her of. You on the other hand…” Richardson paused, glancing over to where MacGregor and Hunter sat, both watching the interaction intently. “Grievous bodily harm with intent. She can face life imprisonment for that charge alone. If we cannot convince the court that she intended to murder you – and I will warn you that it is unlikely that we will be able to prove it – then the next thing we will ask for is fifteen to twenty five years for grievous bodily harm with a dangerous weapon. The fact that she used an Auror’s wand to cause the injury will extend the usual five years into fifteen for this charge.”
Fifteen to life? Draco's mind raced through the consequences of asking them to try for the life sentence. He had no idea how Harry would react, but he was damn sure that Lily, James and Albus would never forgive him if he got their mother locked away forever. Why it hadn’t occurred to him before was beyond him, but it was slowly starting to become clear that this case could adversely affect his relationship with Harry if he didn’t tread very carefully.
“If you try for the life sentence and it is rejected, how long until the re-trial can be set?”
Richardson sat back in his armchair and swirled his whiskey in his glass before responding. “It is likely that the charges posted by both Mr. Potter and whatever the Auror Department are placing against her are going to stick, so she could already be serving quite a lengthy sentence by the time a re-trial is scheduled. Organising the amount of people it would take to get a prisoner transferred from a facility for a re-trial could take months, possibly even up to a year.”
Draco nodded as his thoughts raced. “How long will I have to decide?”
“We do not have a solid date for the trial as of yet, but there are stirrings about next Monday.”
Seven days. That meant that he had roughly two or three days before the lawyers would have to know what he wanted to go with. He was leaning towards the easier option of assault with a dangerous weapon. Accumulated, all the charges sounded like they would land Ginevra with at least fifty years behind bars if Draco tried for the lesser charge. That would mean that he and Harry would be almost ninety years old by the time she was released and, really, who would care about something that had happened so long ago at that age? But then… Life imprisonment would guarantee that everyone he cared for was completely safe from her forever. He shook his head.
“Would it be alright if I took a few days to decide? I’ll be sure to let you know by Wednesday.”
“Of course, of course.” Richardson offered up a huge smile as Draco stood. “You mentioned that there was a request you wished to make earlier?”
Draco glanced over to the other two sitting in front of the fire. Before he could answer, however, MacGregor stood.
“It has been a true pleasure, Mr. Malfoy, and I wish to reiterate that we will offer both you and Mr. Potter every service we can over the course of this trial. However, Ms. Hunter and I have another client who requires our attention. If you would excuse us?”
Draco automatically shook the hand that MacGregor extended to him. Hunter followed the young man out of the door after offering her hand to Draco as well. It was obvious that there was no other client, but Draco appreciated the thought.
“That is a highly intelligent young man you seem to have picked up, Mr. Richardson. Very… diplomatic.”
Richardson chuckled quietly as he moved over towards a desk placed in a dark corner of the room. Lights lit with a wave of his hand and the desk was revealed to have all kinds of papers covering nearly every surface.
“I fear I must apologise for Jeanette’s words earlier. I hope you weren’t too offended; she is used to being able to sway men’s opinions her way with a simple batting of her eyelashes.”
“Mmm,” Draco responded non-committedly. “She is, unfortunately for her, aiming those charms in entirely the wrong direction with me.”
This earned him another chuckle and Draco felt himself begin to relax a little. It was strange, but there was simply something about Garrett Richardson that put him at ease. Perhaps it was the fact that he had known the man his entire life and knew that he had helped his family out of the worst scapes they had ever managed to get themselves into? Whatever it was, Draco found himself much more willing to speak now that the other two had left the room.
“Which leads us into the reason I assume you are really here.” Richardson reached into the drawer of the desk and pulled out a sheaf of parchment. “You wish to sign your divorce papers?”
Draco smiled. “Yes, I do.”
“Please remember to read through them thoroughly before signing to make sure we got everything correct. I’ll give you some privacy for a few minutes.”
Moving so he could take a seat in the chair behind the desk, Draco smiled again when the house-elf reappeared to refill his glass with the expensive whiskey. He sipped it slowly this time as he read through the pages of information, checking to make sure everything was stated the way he and Astoria had agreed on. She had come into this marriage with a substantial fortune of her own, even if the Greengrass inheritance had been split between Astoria and Daphne. They had always kept separate bank accounts, with the exception of one thing: they had split each of their earnings in half and placed one half in a separate account for Scorpius to inherit on his twenty first birthday. Scorpius was not to inherit the Malfoy fortune or Manor until he was married, just as Draco had, so this money would keep him until then.
Most of the information in the papers was things that they had set out when they had first married, so Draco knew that none of that would have changed. It held provisions for both Astoria and Scorpius, as well as Draco, should something disastrous happen. When he reached the pages he had to sign, Draco took up the fancy-looking quill and dipped it into the ink pot. This was it, the end of his marriage. He signed on the line quickly, making sure that the signature was recognisable as being his. Richardson re-entered the room just as he was placing the quill back into the holder.
“Well, everything seems to be in order. I’ll file these tonight and by tomorrow morning, you will be a free man, Mr. Malfoy.”
A free man. The idea was both terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.
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19 Years and 5 Minutes Later